Miracle Man is "Made in America"

Seventy-one-year-old Jack Sullivan is living proof to many Catholics -- and to the Vatican -- that miracles happen.

"If it can happen to me," the retired lawyer says, it can happen to anybody."

It is Sullivan's miraculous healing from major back surgery in 2001 on which the Vatican has based its beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, a 19th century English cleric.

A CT scan revealed that his lower lumbar vertebrae were turning inward, squeezing the spinal canal, causing severe stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal cavity. His doctor advised surgery.

Noted physician Dr. Frank Cammisa, chief of spine surgery at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, who was not involved in the case, said "Many patients do say when they have a very positive result that it was a miracle."

"I don't know the Vatican's definition of (a miracle)," says Cammisa, who has not examined Sullivan or viewed his medical records, "but obviously this person had a very good result, from a very difficult problem, and he may have been very rapid in his recovery, and so he's very fortunate, that's for sure."